Apple Upside-Down Cake: What makes this a pudding?

This recipe didn't just win a prize in the newspaper, it found a permanent place in my great-grandmother's notes.

Apple Upside-Down Cake 3 tablespoons butter ¾ cup sugar, divided into ½ and ¼ cup portions ½ teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 egg 1½ cups flour (cake flour if you have it) ¾ cup milk ½ teaspoon vanilla 2 cups pared and thinly-sliced tart apples (2 apples unless the apples are very big or very small) Heat oven to 375°. Grease an 8"x12" or 9" square pan. Be sure to spray the edges and corners very well. If desired, line the bottom of the pan with paper cut to fit after you spray it. Then press the paper firmly into place, eliminating as many air bubbles as possible, and spray the top of it. Line the bottom of the pan with a single layer of apple slices and set aside. Cream butter, ½ cup of sugar, salt, and baking powder. Beat well. Add egg and vanilla, beat until light. Alternately add the flour and milk. Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup of sugar onto the apples in the pan. Then pour the batter on them, carefully spreading it as needed. (Batter will be thin.) Bake 20-30 minutes, or until the center of the cake springs back when gently pressed with the finger. Ida H. Boerner, 916 Grand Avenue, Port Washington, Wisconsin. Chicago Tribune Recipe Contest, probably 1930s-1940s.

I don't know why this recipe is a pudding. Up until now, I've been working with a theory that people in America used to call cakes "puddings" if they were the same sort of dense, heavy, rich things you would have boiled in a cloth bag a generation earlier. (I'm not getting into the British definition of "pudding" because I don't know what it is.) But even if you ignore the apples and just look at the batter, this recipe doesn't fit. Clearly, "pudding" is as confusing as "salad."

As I read the recipe, I thought it would be really good when pears are in season. But we'll start with apples because that won $5 somewhere in (I'm guessing) the 1930s.

Getting down to the recipe, our pared and sliced apples looked like Granny's busted fingers. I told myself that our pudding would have "homemade charm."

With the fruit ready, we were ready for the cake batter (pudding batter?). It starts with a very small amount of butter.

This was too much bowl.

 

I finished the batter and thought "This recipe does NOT make very much cake!" Then I remembered I cut the recipe in half.

Next, it was time to sprinkle sugar on our apple slices. I deliberately waited until the batter was ready because I didn't want things getting all hygroscopic in the pan while I mixed everything else. We have learned in earlier recipes that if you mix sugar and apples, the sugar will draw out so much juice that it can dissolve itself. With that in mind, I didn't think this cake was supposed to start with a watery mess under the batter. If it was, Ms. Ida H. Boerner would have probably included a line like "set aside to dissolve."

Two tablespoons of sugar (remember, we halved the recipe) didn't seem like a lot until I sprinkled it into the pan. It looked like a little sparkly snowdrift.

Because we didn't have much batter, I had to get every last bit of it out of the bowl and coax it VERY carefully to the corners. 

I set the timer for 5 minutes early, but I should have wandered into the kitchen a little before then. Our cake was a little well-roasted. 

Nothing wrong with being a little extra golden on top.

When I flipped the cake out of its pan, only a few apple slices stayed behind. I should have sprayed the edges and corners extra-well. But they were easy enough to put back into place.

I usually ignore when a recipe says how many it serves. But we really need to talk about portion size here. The recipe says it serves eight. Since I halved the recipe, that means that one serving is a quarter of this cake. To repeat, this cake only serves four.

That's my kind of serving size.

Well, the depression was on. Who wants to end a day of economic trial and punishment with a tiny sliver of dessert?

I'm surprised the batter rose so well. It barely covered the apples before baking.

If we zoom in on the edge, the sugar made this really good semi-candied layer on top. 

This cake was so good. The sugar made a perfect crust on top of it, the apples were baked just right, and the cake itself was delicious. To my surprise, I liked that the batter was thin on top of the fruit- even if it made it a little tricky to spread in the pan. The thin cake meant the apples were a part of it instead of living a separate existence on top. Also, the apple juice suffused the entire cake as it slowly steamed its way up from the bottom of the pan. So yes, we will definitely make this again.